dkirschner's Bayonetta (360)

[November 11, 2012 11:25:21 AM]

This game was incredible. It's very Devil May Cry/God of War -ish. But faster, funnier, prettier, and more epic. Maybe not as epic as the original God of War when that came out, but pretty close. The boss battles for sure are some of the biggest and most cool things I've ever played. Where to start...

I'll go on and talk about the character, Bayonetta, first. I like her. She's sassy. A total smartass. Besides that, she's a witch. Her hair is magical and it morphs into all kinds of beastly forms (dragon, spider, bird of prey, etc.) to devour enemies. These biggest and beastliest of forms come usually during boss fights. Otherwise, her hair mostly takes the shape of high heels and kicks and stomps enemies. Yep. The high heels come out at the end of combos, of which there is a near-endless variety. Bayonetta is also a weapons and martial arts expert and apparently a really good dancer. Her movement about the battlefield seems to be influenced most by dancing and runway modeling. She's sexy and she knows it. She struts around and blows kisses and talks dirty to bosses. It's very funny. Bayonetta doesn't like crying children. Her response to the crying little girl, Cereza, upon meeting her is hilarious. Bayonetta has a history shrouded in mystery. And that's the goal of the game.

The world of Bayonetta is really awesome. There's a whole mythology behind it. Basically, there are 3 realities - Paradiso (like heaven), Inferno (like hell), and Purgatorio (like the earthly human realm). They are not separate. There used to be a truce and reality maintenance upheld by the Witches and the Sages, but [story] happened and the 3 realities began to interfere with one another. Bayonetta can move between them, kind of like 'phasing' from one reality to another, which she has to do periodically. It's really neat how she interacts with one of the other main characters, a male journalist who has a bone to pick with her, by phasing between realities. This idea is explained really well in the game, and it's executed in a way that made me go "oh man, so smart, so smart!" so many times. Actually understanding the three realities and this phasing is integral to understanding the journalist's part in the story. What you think happened from his point of view in the beginning is not the full story of what actually happened! So you go through the game uncovering the past and learning about Bayonetta, the Witches and the Sages, the current bad people, and following the journalist and the little girl.

What does Bayonetta actually do? She kills angels. Angels are bad. She has pistols in her hands and attached to her shoes. So she's a whirlwind of death. The fighting is really really fast-paced. It was sometimes too fast for me to keep up, especially at the beginning. I'd just put the controller down and be like, ok time out. What's going on here? It's incredibly fluid and responsive and takes a good deal of skill, especially later on. But you will develop it and get better at it. Like I said, there are seemingly infinite combos. You do a normal attack with Y, a strong attack with B, shoot with X. Basically any combination of Y and B does something, up to six presses, including pauses in between. So I liked to use YBY which is a nice quick strong 3-hit combo that knocks most enemies down. I also liked YYBBB and YYYBB. But literally, almost any combination does something unique. Holding X at the end of any combo ends it with gunfire. You dodge with RT. It was brilliant in that you can dodge mid-combo and then continue your combo after dodging. You purchase other moves and items and things from a shop. If you double-tap dodge, you morph into a panther and can sprint super fast, necessary for the final boss. If you double tap in the air, you turn into a bird and can fly around and fire missiles. There are also 'torture attacks' that you can trigger once you fill your magic gauge. These are awesome and gory special moves where you smash enemies in iron maidens or pull them apart on the rack or whatever by quickly mashing one button or another. Tons of variety in the combat. It's a whole lot of fun. When I realized how much I'd improved at it since the beginning, I felt like a genius.

The boss battles deserve their own space for praise. These were seriously epic, levels unto themselves. I don't think any took me less than 10 minutes. They've all got multiple parts, checkpoints throughout, and involve some of the coolest looking angels. They are huge, for one. The multiple parts generally inivolve dismantling the boss in some way - cutting off legs, arms, smashing armor, etc. The character design on the enemies is fantastic. I mean, the art style in general, especially the Paradiso parts, is just awesome. Go google Paradiso or Bayonetta enemies and gawk. They look so freaking cool. The last boss spans like 3 parts. I tried and failed like 10 times one day, put the game down for a few days, then came back to try again and did it with only one death. One of the best parts of any boss fight was killing the...third maybe. There was this statue of a cherub earlier in the level. At the end of the boss fight, which I think involved some sort of wind/tornado, there's this big pile on top of the boss that Bayonetta has arranged. Boss is on the bottom. Gasoline tanker on top of the boss. She stuffs the statue halfway into the tanker. The gasoline flows through the statue and comes out like the cherub is peeing on the dead boss. Then she lights it all on fire. Hilarious.

The only criticism of the game is the camera. It can be really wonky at times and refuse to look at what you want to look at. The default setting is far too slow, so make sure to speed up the panning. But enemies will get you into a corner sometimes and the camera makes it a super pain to get out. I just had to try and stay in the open. And sometimes for the bosses or larger enemies, the camera can have a hard time taking it all in to show you what you want to see at any given time. There was this one motorcycle part (there are several rail shooter/arcade motorcycle type segments) where the camera or the track kept screwing up and I'd fall through a hole. I'm not sure exactly what was going on, but it killed me like 10 times. There was just this weird kink in the track and the camera would freak out and I'd die.

I *highly* recommend playing this if you like action games at all. It's not an easy game. I played on Normal, the middle one, and found it quite challenging. I'm no expert at action games, so take that how you may. But Bayonetta is one of the most interesting and likeable characters I've come across in a long time. She's smart, sexy, funny, and a complete badass. I also love the game world.
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dkirschner's Bayonetta (360)

Current Status: Finished playing

GameLog started on: Monday 29 October, 2012

GameLog closed on: Thursday 8 November, 2012

dkirschner's opinion and rating for this game

Very cool so far! Action-packed, over-the-top, Devil May Cry/God of War type insanity. Interesting story, characters, setting. --------- Fantastic. Amazing story and game world. Bayonetta is an awesome character. Such epic boss fights.